‘Chuck,’ the little spy show that could, ended a pretty remarkable 5 season, 91 episode run last Friday night. The show, low-rated from the start and always on the cancellation bubble, managed to beat the odds and come back year after year thanks to strong critical praise, a small but devoted fanbase that campaigned to keep the show on the air by buying Subway sandwiches (Subway being one of the show’s sponsors), and the fact that those low ratings were actually quite constant and therefore worth keeping around when compared to the rest of NBC’s lineup.

I had been sort of putting off writing this, opting instead to read all the other reviews and retrospectives online (there’s a great 5-part interview with the show’s creators on Alan Sepinwall’s blog), to see if the critics loved this finale as much as I did. With a number of callbacks to the show’s past (particularly the pilot), and the same humor and heart that’s made it a favorite of mine for the past five years, these final two hours gave me everything I could possibly want in a finale, the most successful part of which is the fact that it didn’t simply resign itself to wrapping everything up in a tidy, happy little bow. Don’t get me wrong, there was still a happy ending (it wouldn’t be ‘Chuck’ if there wasn’t), but not in the way I expected. Continue Reading